It's utterly maddening to me how much annoying doublespeak permeates through corporate American culture.

Even when management does something that seems objectively awful, they always feel a need to try and spin it into something aggressively positive (e.g. treating layoffs as an "opportunity to reorganize"). You can't speak candidly about anything because anything remotely negative will come off as a "bad attitude" or "not a team player".

After a job interview I'm expected to send an email about how I "appreciate the opportunity regardless of the outcome". I suppose that's not completely untrue, but to some extent if I don't get the job it really is a waste of time for both parties. I've been told you're supposed to send a thank you letter even if you're declined, which feels like a punch in the gut. You've already rejected me and decided I'm not good enough to work at your magnificent company, but you still expect me to grovel and suck up to you.

I've told this story before, but at a previous job at a BigCo I made the statement "we all do this for the money" [1]. I end up getting told by my manager that that was inappropriate and indicative of an attitude problem. It was candid, but is it untrue? I don't think so; you might do it for other reasons in addition to the money, but if the job stopped paying you then you would stop showing up, and that's totally fine.

I am sure there are studies saying that being overly candid and honest leads to worse outcomes in corporations, and fine, maybe it's "necessary", but I don't have to like it. I wish I could live in the a utopia where people say what they actually mean. I wish I could live in a society were I'm not expected to pretend that this isn't fucking weird.

"Weird" is the right word for it. It's weird that corporations seem to like being lied to. It's weird that everyone just goes along with it. It's weird that not everyone seems to think it's weird.

[1] To be clear, I didn't bring this up out of nowhere; people were criticizing a potential job candidate trying to negotiate his salary higher, which I thought was a little unfair.